Histoire sociale et événements historiques. Pour une nouvelle approche

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Social History and Historical Events: for a New Approach. A. Suter. By radically altering the conditions of life in Russia, the whole of Eastern Europe, and Germany, the so-called "Wende" of 1989—that is, the fall of communism— reminded us that historical events can sometimes give rise to vast structural changes. At the same time it refuted some of the very basic theoretical and methodological assumptions of social history. In fact, social historians had for a long time adopted a reductionist view of historical events. In sharp contrast to nineteenth and early twentieth century historians, they had argued that historical events were virtually predetermined by existing structural conditions and thus were neither autonomous nor capable of bringing about structural change. Being considered no more than "surface phenomena" (Fernand Braudel), historical events had lost, as far as social history was concerned, their status as privileged objects of historical analysis. How then, taking this recent experience of 1989 into account, do events come about? What constitutes their autonomy and their power to change structures? How should the story of an event be written, after all? For the reasons just outlined, social historians have not yet come up with very convincing answers. One wonders therefore whether we all ought—as some "revisionist" historians already have— to return to the former methods and answers of historicism. This article strictly rejects such an option. Instead, it attempts to develop theoretical and methodological alternatives which better suit social historians.